[...] To my understanding the decision to use lager block sizes hasto be made by the miners [...]

No, the decision must come from consensus on the Bitcoin Foundation and coders, probably derived from consensus with full node owners. Miners (pool miners, specifically) play little or no role regarding block size.

No, the consensus is simply the people who mine and use the blockchain.Yes a pool can ignore their miners, but a pool is still a miner If pools/miners decide to not want the change, and there is a high enough % that decide this, then that will answer it.If exchanges decide to go with the change then that may influence pools/miners who want to be able to use their mined BTC.But the reverse is also true that the exchanges may decide that they don't want to risk very low transaction confirmation if most pools/miners go against it.

My only confusion in it is that ... I don't see an overnight sudden increase in transactions because of the change.The change would simply mean that future growth wouldn't be stifled by hitting the limit as quickly.

Anyway - there's threads on the subject, to look at elsewhere ... ...

Pool: https://kano.is Here on Bitcointalk: Forum BTC: 1KanoPb8cKYqNrswjaA8cRDk4FAS9eDMLUFreeNode IRC: irc.freenode.net channel #kano.isMajority developer of the ckpool codeHelp keep Bitcoin secure by mining on pools with full block verification on all blocks - and NO empty blocks!

[...] To my understanding the decision to use lager block sizes hasto be made by the miners [...]

No, the decision must come from consensus on the Bitcoin Foundation and coders, probably derived from consensus with full node owners. Miners (pool miners, specifically) play little or no role regarding block size.

No, the consensus is simply the people who mine and use the blockchain.Yes a pool can ignore their miners, but a pool is still a miner If pools/miners decide to not want the change, and there is a high enough % that decide this, then that will answer it.If exchanges decide to go with the change then that may influence pools/miners who want to be able to use their mined BTC.But the reverse is also true that the exchanges may decide that they don't want to risk very low transaction confirmation if most pools/miners go against it.

My only confusion in it is that ... I don't see an overnight sudden increase in transactions because of the change.The change would simply mean that future growth wouldn't be stifled by hitting the limit as quickly.

Anyway - there's threads on the subject, to look at elsewhere ... ...

Ooh my... being quoted by THE Kano, i can delete that from my bucket list. Anyways, what you say is true, there's countless threads regarding this matter for us to dabble in it.

Anywas, payments on slush have been steady enough that we can disregard the drop in hashrate. A little variance adds spice to life.

[...] To my understanding the decision to use lager block sizes hasto be made by the miners [...]

No, the decision must come from consensus on the Bitcoin Foundation and coders, probably derived from consensus with full node owners. Miners (pool miners, specifically) play little or no role regarding block size.

No, the consensus is simply the people who mine and use the blockchain.Yes a pool can ignore their miners, but a pool is still a miner

I think a pool should not ignore its miners. If a topic is really controversial the pool operator should state what rules he intends to follow and miners could base their decision which pool to use also on that. If we take it serious that bitcoin is a decentralised system people should be aware of their 'power'. (OK maybe the powerof small miners is limited).

I don't want to turn mining into a highly political affair. But I think everybody using and contributing tobitcoin should make up his mind. Finally this kind of decisions can influence the future development ofbitcoin (centralisation/decentralisation). In the end it is best to find some consensus based on goodarguments.

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If pools/miners decide to not want the change, and there is a high enough % that decide this, then that will answer it.If exchanges decide to go with the change then that may influence pools/miners who want to be able to use their mined BTC.But the reverse is also true that the exchanges may decide that they don't want to risk very low transaction confirmation if most pools/miners go against it.

My only confusion in it is that ... I don't see an overnight sudden increase in transactions because of the change.The change would simply mean that future growth wouldn't be stifled by hitting the limit as quickly.

Anyway - there's threads on the subject, to look at elsewhere ... ...

If I look at the average blocksize we have a slow exponential groth over the last 3 years. If we extrapolate it, the 1Mblimit will be hit in 2 years from now on and it will take about 8 years to reach 20Mb. So I personally do not see an urgentneed for a large change of the limit with may have unforeseeable effects.

But right - there are threads on the subject, to look at elsewhere ...

It seems quite odd to me when I look at the hash rate on Slush's Pool and BTCGuild, the hash rate has gone down considerably. However, if you look at the overall network hash rate, it has gone up considerably. Any thoughts?

Home miners continuing to leave while giant farms (especially in China) continue to come online. Now that it's getting hot in the northern hemisphere (which is where most home miners are located), it's becoming even more of a loss to keep miners running due to the extra cooling needed if you have them in your home. They also perform worse at higher ambient temperatures, so home miners are literally just losing some of their hashrate in the warmer weather.

EDIT: Also the fact that there's not a single pool outside of China that even has 5% of the network anymore makes it a self-fulfilling prophecy that the pools continue to shrink because people can't stand variance.

However, I will say this though: One miner who had 2.5 PH/s all by their lonesome left, one miner with 1.0 PH/s all by their lonesome has left and another miner with 1.5 PH/s all by their lonesome has left. One could tell this very easily if they were paying attention to the "Hash Rate Distribution Chart" under Pool Statistics at the bottom of the page.

Hit my payout and then quite a bit of the next due to the larger payout with the low hash rate. I ended up staying on as I had a migraine most of the day and didn't feel like reconfiguring pools. So of course there is another long block.

Has anyone noticed wild up and down hash rate fluctuations on these long blocks? I was watching and when they were hitting the blocks the hash rate was very steady on the two miners I was using on Slush's, with the long block it started going up and down in wild swings in short intervals. I noticed this the last few times they've had a long block. This doesn't impact rejected work, I think I only had 24 rejects in the last 12hrs, but I did notice that my best share stats are considerably lower than typical.

Wow, low hashrate and many hours between blocks. I have just a 50 ths mine, but have had to cut it back to about 40 due to the heat in my area. But, I've definitely seen a drop in the payouts. I may have to switch pools if the whole week ends up this way...